For those of us with pencil lead buried under our skin

by Suw on August 3, 2004

Discovered today that my new boss, Livio, and I share something unusual – we both have chunks of pencil let under our skin. Mine is in the palm of my hand, Livio's is in the webbing inbetween his fingers.
But that's not the end of today's coincidence. Tonight I am staying in my friend Gerard's spare room, and as I was recounting the story of the strange coincidence he rolled up his sleeve and pointed out his little bit of pointy pencil lead.
How strange is that? I have spent my entire life being the only person that I know with a bit of pencil lead stuck under her skin, and in one day I meet two other people with the same thing!
Oh, btw, I dug the splinters out with a scalpel. No blood, no pain, not as bad as I had thought. Dramaqueen!

I've had a few more emails and comments in IRC from others who are similarly enleadened – guess it's not so rare as I had thought. Definitely no plans to dig mine out though. No, il'l save that sort of surgery for splinters.

My mark is on the side of the knee, where sure enough I stabbed myself accidentally with a pencil when I was a child. Don't recall it bleeding, it just left this black mark under the skin that's still there.
I remember discussing this once with two other people and both had their own marks, one had hers just under her chin where she'd rested it (too hard) on the pencil tip. So this may be more common than we think. Same principle as a tattoo I guess though lots less painful.
-rml

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